t,/\ ... f:' , ).f( l:. -- . ".;;!: .....i. \" I tTf' ..1 ,.}. "i'1&amp;d .- " . "t.' ..,,- I : :;"Yk; . :h, , . ., : :;':. ,,' ; . ' 1.. ,.., T,; :',:1;': :, ; " " ;.1 '. '1 f lii::', ;:,:i-,,;; :i , , J J't'l ""'t.t.:."6:. \?>-.;}i;,!" ,?i,'èl}::,.,. . . .i*,l'' 'ì""::1;\.'",=(:.I_,f.....:"'%"'t-ILri.'T" . .. , , "J.">,;,'."..Y{!:;'.:t...l, ..< ;lt: c: ::t.i<,;' '- -- , .;tíf-r.:;j! < /;:Il1J t 1 '. (;...... r" t, " J .$> . "t i I r;" .,. ' ..... <.<'>. (t:f" .... - . . .--'." ;:;.. . " ."j:I,-..-.ð'. '. "'. U'V'>' 's - . '- " ,':'.. .; . .';' .::'..1;ir.ti;,ìt!, entious, but she never struck a spark from me, she never threw a new light on any subject." But the letters to Bahlmann reveal that the good little governess was a significant mentor, and a greater intel- lectual companion than Wharton, in her retrospective self-fashioning, cared to remember. (The letters were written when Bahlmann-who also worked for the J oneses' Newport neighbors and other well-born families-was obliged to travel for work, or when she and Wharton were otherwise separated.) The letters show that Edith seized upon Bahlmann as firmly as the captain of a sailboat in Newport Bay grasps the til- ler on a windy day. "You are my Su- preme critic. . . &amp;1 look upon yourver- dict with infinite faith &amp; respect," she wrote in a letter of 1878. The strength of this attachment may speak as much to her hunger for an intellectual com- panion as it does to Bahlmann's own cleverness; unfortunately, the govern- ess's letters, from which her measure might be taken, do not survive. But a letter from 1880 indicates that Edith (j L . \ . '. -r '2 - " .'t - ,. :JV?n . '. ' .:'\ \." - :'-::-- '. ", '-J . " - " ';--, wy . ';:\ :),\ , ,< '. ',,-"., ", " ,' 'c , i7S' . ,?-t À ....l.. "; .>7 .t:,." '", I ,: believed herself to have found with BaWmann the kind of friendship "which makes itself felt less by personal inter- course, than by those shocks ofintellec- tual sympathy which seem to bridge over silence and space and make two . d " min s as one. To Bahlmann Edith conveyed her opinions of the poems she was reading, such as Longfellows "The Mask of Pan- dora," which she admired, but with res- ervations. "His poetry always reminds me of a chilly sculpture, it is so lifeless," she wrote. "His characterswantvigour. They are passionless &amp; collected as if they were walking in a trance." Under Bahlmann's tutelage, Edith translated Goethès po- etry, working on a version of "Mignon." (She continued to quote the work into her old age.) In 1876, she wrote to BaW- mann, "I have been more than rewarded by your frank criticism, which is so much more of compliment to me than the po- lite, unmeaning, 'Oh it's lovely,' which I so often get when I beg for an honest .. " opimon. She sent Bahlmann her own poems, too. "I don't know whether they are very -....... .-. 10 ...... . ,:-. "'\." .1_. ". '. '. "'.1 'I : ,; ,'- " i ::'. , ß:. .... , , ---- "". lÇ '"-''''' ' " .'. ., . , '>.. : .' . \. ' .', _. '''wi.,...- !' ..('I.., :.':' ': . ,'.' ?" <-. . ßIW.;1 "Forgive the informality-my secretary is on vacation. " bad or quite good," she wrote, after sending her a package of verses. "I think they will admit of both constructions, so you may choose." In her autobiography, Wharton said that her poems-"which I poured out with a lamentable facility"- were often written on sheets of brown paper that previously had been wrapped around deliveries to the J oneses' house- hold, the provision of foolscap being in- adequate to her demands. But her po- etic efforts were not, she acknowledged, entirely ignored by her parents: her mother had a selection of her composi- tions privately published, under the title "1' T " h h . verses, w en s e was sIXteen. Although as a grown woman Whar- ton emphasized the effect of her parents' selective neglect upon her literary devel- opment, in the Bahlmann letters she seems, in the manner of adolescents ev- erywhere, oblivious of George and Lu- cretia Jones except as occasionally useful facilitators. Her father performs the drudgery of copying out her translations ("Rewriting my eloquent effusions is horrible to me"), and her mother per- forms necessary managerial functions. "About such prosaic things as business matters"-presumably, the latest terms ofBaWmann's employment-"what can the immortal translator of Goethe have to say?" the fourteen-year-old Edith de- clares, with a grandeur that seems only in part self-mocking. "I leave that to Mama, who is going to write you on ra- tional subjects." When Wharton, in her autobiogra- phy, tells the story of her first, abortive attempt to write a novel, she suggests that her mother's dismissive remarks sent her storytelling self scurrying into a hole for almost thirty years. In fact, at the age of fourteen she did complete a novel of manners, entitled "Fast and Loose." (It went unpublished until 1977.) Concerning the exploits of the enticing Georgie Rivers, who spurns her devoted but penniless lover for mar- riage with a rich, elderly lord, "Fast and Loose," which she wrote under the pen name David Olivieri, is surprisingly funny. (After dispatching a three- line note accepting the lord's marriage proposal, Georgie reflects that it is "like answering a dinner-invitation. . . but I can't make it longer. I don't know what to say!") In a particularly sophis- ticated turn, Edith wrote several